My name is Mr. Shanklin and I am the Founder of Entrepreneur Millionaire. Here is my story of how I stumbled into entrepreneurship:
Early Beginnings
I was born in the city of Lake Charles, LA to a beautiful mother that would sacrifice anything to see her son become successful. As a kid, I loved to ask questions to try to understand why things were happening. Starting from Pre-Kindergarten, my grades placed me at the top of my classes every year up until high school graduation. In Louisiana, there is something called the Gifted program for people who show exceptional intelligence and I was apart of it. Around the age of 7, I started to play basketball everyday and decided that I want to become a NBA Player when I grew up.
What do you want to do?
By the time I got to the 5th grade, I began to seriously think about what I wanted to do with my life if the NBA didn’t plan out. My dad worked at the local refineries and was making around $60-$100K depending on how much overtime he worked. To me that was a ton of money at the time and since I enjoyed and was good at mathematics, I began to lean towards chemical engineering. The unemployment rates were low and there were many refineries in Lake Charles and other areas in Louisiana which include Baton Rouge. Also, it was around this time I decided that I wanted to attend Louisiana State University. Now that I look back, it’s crazy how I pretty much had my life planned out in the 5th grade.
Reality Sets In
Fast forward to high school, my first plan fell through. I enjoyed playing basketball and was good at it, but I was 5′ 4′. My height was limiting the chances of me becoming successful in a sport I had been playing for the past 8+ years. When senior year rolled around, I finally decided that playing official basketball would be wasting my time so I quit the team. Right after I quit the team, my parents recommended that I try to find a job to get a taste of the working world. Eventually, I ended up working at a grocery chain called Kroger as a bagger.
The Fall into Entrepreneurship
The more I worked at Kroger which was around 30 hours per week, the more I hated having a boss. The idea of someone telling me what to do for 40+ years seemed unreasonable in my book. Around this time, I took a trip to the library and stumbled on a book called “The Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki which opened my eyes. His teachings of assets, liabilities, and passive income inspired me to increase my knowledge and look for ways to make money without a job. At Kroger I was getting a paycheck every week and since I was living with my parents I didn’t have that many expenses, so I decided to invest my income into creating a passive income.
Freedom
I began selling items I picked up at garage sales and stuff I didn’t need to create a small but steady income stream. Making money without a job felt amazing and I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I ended up quitting Kroger and focusing entirely on graduating high school and learning more about business. As I got to LSU, I really thought about if I wanted to become a chemical engineer and decided that I wanted to be apart of the technology movement so I switched my major to computer science. In November 2014, I decided to launch Entrepreneur Millionaire as a way of me to discuss my journey through entrepreneurship, connect with other entrepreneurs, and build a community.
